Back to the basics: god, the creator

“I believe in God, the Father almighty, Creator of heaven and earth”
~The Apostles’ Creed

Although, as Christians, we believe in a Trinitarian God, I have found that many Christian traditions emphasize the First Person of the Trinity above the others, either as the first to exist or as the most important of the three—both of which are unhelpful at best and heretical at worst. For many, this is the natural result of being raised in a Christian tradition whose oral and community prayers were always directed to the Father (i.e. The Our Father) and rarely, if ever, to Jesus or the Holy Spirit. A notable exception to this would be the Salvation Prayers directed to Jesus popular in Baptist and Evangelical traditions, but even in these churches, prayers to “the Lord” and “God Almighty” dominate from the pulpit and in prayer circles. When prayers focus almost exclusively on God, the Father, it is difficult to have a relationship with Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

There are many reasons for the tendency to elevate the First Person of the Trinity—an emphasis in the First Testament, Jesus’ instruction to the disciples to pray to “our Father” (Matthew 6:9-13; Luke 11:2-4), the language of “first,” “second,” and “third persons” for the trinity, and an androcentric theology (and society) that values a pyramidal hierarchy with a leading paternal figure. Even using the non-gendered title “Creator” implies the primacy of this person over Jesus and the Holy Spirit. 

However, even though it lends itself to a hierarchical interpretation, the identity of the First Person of the Trinity as “Creator” is most meaningful to me. God as Creator, lovingly forming all that exists and desiring that we be formed in God’s image from the earth (and star) dust, speaks to God’s nature in a way that is both awesome and comforting. In his book, Tokens of Trust, Rowan Williams writes, 

“God is, in simple terms, sublimely and eternally happy to be God, and the fact that this sublime eternal happiness overflows into the act of creation is itself a way of telling us that God is to be trusted absolutely, that God has no private agenda.”

Awesome because God’s overflowing, contented happiness is what created us; comforting because being in relationship with a being that is wholly content without needing us is the healthiest form of love—a love resulting from choice, not necessity. We exist not because God needs us to be more fully God, “we exist” as Williams asserts, “because of an utterly unconditional generosity.

Understanding this generous nature of our Creator is important when considering the first person of God’s “almighty” nature. God’s omnipresence, omniscience, and omnipotence would be terrifying if not for God’s omnibenevolence. In all of God’s eternal presence, might, and knowledge, God’s eternal goodness is there as well. So, when we pray Psalm 139, 

“Where can I go from your spirit?
Or where can I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to the heaven, you are there;
if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
If I take the wings of the morning 
and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me fast”
(Psalm 139:7-10)

We may be content knowing that this Almighty God is not following us around in a threatening, surveilling manner, but rather in a way that speaks to God’s desire to always be near us—ever loving and reliable. Again, not because God needs to be, but rather because God wants to be. 

We, however, do need this relationship with God. As is true of all the created, we as divine image-bearers owe God not only our created existence but also our continuing, evolving nature. As Elizabeth Johnson beautifully describes in her book, Go Ask the Beasts, God creates “not like a sculptor who makes a statue and leaves it alone, but like a singer who keeps her song in existence at all times.” Our relationship with God flows from and continues on in God’s ever-creating nature; and we live into the supreme gift of co-creating our lives alongside the God who formed us, the Savior who renews us, and the Spirit who breathes vitality into us.